Rooftop wind turbine, energy for the people

A rooftop wind-turbine the size of a domestic satellite dish is being hailed a breakthrough in the acrimonious debate over the future of wind power. Designed and built in Scotland, the miniature turbines have just been fitted to the first roofs in a pilot project which could provide a personal electricity supply for every home on which they are perched. The inventors hope to begin full-scale production by the end of the year and hope to be making more than 3,000 a year by 2006. For the first time, electrical power from renewable sources could be directly installed to individual properties for £1,500 and produce enough energy to run most off-peak appliances in the home and up to a third of all power needs the rest of the time. Each unit could pay for itself in three to four years, the inventors say. And with a 20-year guarantee from the manufacturers, each turbine could provide householders with up to 16 years of free electricity.

"This is a great breakthrough in the fight to reduce greenhouse emissions," a spokesman for Friends of the Earth Scotland, said. "We have always said the ideal way forward is to produce as much power as close to the point of use as possible so it relieves pressure on sensitive sites with the construction of wind farms and electricity cables. Combined with solar power, better education on the use and waste of energy, and more efficient appliances these turbines could be a real step forward." The Swift Rooftop Wind Energy System, developed by the Edinburgh company Renewable Devices Limited, supplies the power directly into a home's individual existing mains supply. Each turbine is made up of five two-metre rotor blades encased in an outer- production because if people can generate elf they will require less from the national grid."

But opponents of wind-energy schemes doubted whether domestic turbines would substitute for vast wind farms spoiling the countryside. There are 200 wind farms working, under construction or proposed, throughout Britain. The Government has set a target of producing 20 per cent of energy from wind power by 2020, and experts claim that to meet this there will have to be at least five times that number. "[The miniature turbines] are hardly going to revolutionise the domestic energy market," said David Bruce, chairman of Views of Scotland, an umbrella organisation representing wind-farm protest groups. "The machines have a nameplate rating of 1.5kW; on the rare occasions that wind conditions were perfect, you would need two of them to boil a kettle. For most of the time, they would produce about a fifth of that amount.